International

Monday, November 3, 2014

Muybridge resumed

Five years later in 1877 Muybridge
resumed the problem of photographing rapid action. Stanford underwrote the
experiments, and made available not only his stable, but also the services of
one of the engineers of the Central Pacific Railroad, John D. Isaacs. A battery
of cameras was built in a shed beside a racetrack to record consecutive phases
of motion.

Muybridge first used a mechanical device
to trip the shutter-strings were stretched across the track, which the horses
broke during their runs before the cameras. These strings were attached to the
shutters, which closed, by the action of rubber bands. These shutters Were soon
replaced with electrically controlled ones: the circuits were closed by the
string method, or by the steel tires of a sulky running over bare wires lying
on the ground. Muybridge was awarded two patents in 1879 for these
synchronization devices.

The background was covered with rock
salt, which gleamed in the sunlight, to give maximum contrast on the slow wet
plate. The results were "diminutive silhouettes," not brilliant
images but clear enough to furnish evidence for scientific study. A set of
prints was deposited in the Library of Congress in 1878, others were published
in scientific journals.Stanford formally published the experiments in a
handsome quarto The Horse in Motion(1882), with a text by
J.D.B. Stillman, and with many drawings after the Muybridge photographs. As
Muybridge later complained, they were published "without the formality of
his name on the title page."